Representing Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio’s Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)
Representing Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio’s Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)
Boccaccio's character Madonna Filippa brilliantly defends herself in court against an adultery charge—and dodges a cruel capital punishment. Readers have long assumed that since medieval Italian women had no place in court, Filippa's story must be an ironic parody. This presentation inserts Boccaccio's heroine into her historical context of medieval northern Italy, where several women […]